At first, music licensing may seem frightening. There are several rights to consider when music is performed in public or commercial places. It’s not like when you’re alone at home and can play anything you want, whenever you want.
When we were still known as Spotify for Business and played music legally, we helped all sorts of clients with this issue. We ensure that you can play music legally in your business, matching it to whatever you’re all about, raising sales and morale without compromising the freedom, personalization, and individuality you’ve anticipated.
Permits are what make everything legal
Unlike music for personal use, background music for commercial usage must jump through a few more hoops. This is because it is being used in a business environment to achieve corporate goals rather than just for personal enjoyment.
Two sorts of licenses are necessary in this case. The first is a performance and reproduction license.
These include the development of a song, its lyrics, a specific sound recording, and its initial commercial use. This assures that singers, composers, and artists are paid royalties whenever their music is used, and organizations like ASCAP and BMI govern it.
The second sort of license is the public performance license. PROs (performance rights organizations) handle this, and they assess how your real corporate space appears – how many speakers you have, how many people come in daily, etc. Many local PROs depend on the country, and because each business is unique, business owners must sort out these permissions on their own.
Playing music in your business that hasn’t been cleared for commercial use in your location is a punishable offense if you’re a business. However, it is not a trivial offense, with fines ranging from a few hundred dollars per song to hundreds of thousands of dollars if your company’s unauthorized music was intentionally played.
You’re not only saving yourself from hot water but also money and time. When you compare the cost of ASCAP and BMI to a Soundtrack subscription, you’re looking at a 50% savings, not just a few cents.
You’re on the lookout for more than just legal music
We want to make having the most extensive selection of licensed, tried-and-true music ideal for business as simple as possible. You’ve probably noticed that Soundtrack provides the most comprehensive collection of legal corporate music accessible (over 58 million tracks). But if that were the end of it, we’d give you a vast file library and an aux cord and call it a day.
It’s important to remember why music is played in commercial settings in the first place. Magnus Rydén, Soundtrack’s Head of Music, is shown here.
What kind of music may I play if I don’t have a license?
Two types of music can be performed without a PROs license: jazz and classical.
- Music that isn’t protected by copyright. This includes public domain music and music licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 (No Rights Reserved) license.
- Music is written and performed by musicians and composers who are not affiliated with any PRO.
You don’t need to get a license from the performance rights society to use the song as background music in commercial situations.
Conclusion
When music is played in a corporate setting, it is no longer for your enjoyment.
For a business reason, it’s there to help your organization achieve specific goals and, presumably, create more money. As a result, the copyright law states that music owners should be compensated if their music contributes to the success of their business.
According to research done by a Canadian newspaper, 80 per cent of small business owners unlawfully broadcast music or consider that music license rates are too high for their company.
